The CanDetect project takes advantage of the utility and
reliability of ordinary sound cards under linux to
magnetically monitor the environment using only
some wire and an ordinary full duplex sound card.

The wire is coiled into loops. The software sends and receives
magnetic signals, and the induction results are computed.
The software can build as a self contained bootable linux floppy.

CanDetect can be used to look for metal inside walls,
useful when hanging pictures or attaching furniture to studs.
The same software can be used with special magnetoresistive
probes to look at flaws such as hidden corrosion in
experimental aircraft and without any damage from the search.
There are many other applications for inductive environment
monitoring.

In this talk, we discuss how to build such a probe and
the issues and advantages of using linux for operating it,
such as ease of embedding and the lower latency of the kernel.